For the last several days I’ve been devoting some time and even more of my limited energy to sorting through some of the papers that descended on me when my mom died. As I think I’ve mentioned before, one of my family’s vices is that we keep everything. I’ve been going through century-old bank statements, handwritten notes, IOUs, tax statements, and many other documents. I don’t believe they’ll hold any value for my nephews, nieces, and their children. Some of that is generational change. Some of them have no meaning to any living person.
For example:
What the heck is that? I have hundreds of them, many with the same date. Some are for what appear to be the same parcel of land but the payees are different.
I’m hesitant to throw anything away if I don’t know what it is.
Update
I’m not throwing everything away. For example, among the scraps are my parents’ and my paternal grandparents’ wedding certificates. I’m keeping those. I’m also resisting the temptation to track down the descendants of some of the people whose hundred-year-old IOUs I have. Some of the more than century-old IOUs are definitely not for bar bills—they’re for what much have been considerable sums in the 1920s. I can only speculate that my grandfather and great-grandfather were operating as a sort of informal bank.
I’m struck by the one month term. $8.13 in 1924 is roughly equal to $153 today. A lot of money, but possibly enough to pay in a month? If it was expected to be paid in a month, perhaps the debt arose from transactional cost associated with a real estate conveyance? I am not familiar with how deeds in trust worked. Or if it was not expected to be paid in a month, it might just be a loan taken out on the property.
I’ve got almost 80 that appear to refer to the same piece of property. At $8.13 that comes to a pretty tidy sum.
Furthermore, I’m wondering about the “No. 1”. Each of the notes lists a different number, i.e. “No. 1”, “No. 2”, etc. Also, if Peterson is paying Crilly, why do I have them? It means they came into the hands of either my grandfather or great-grandfather.
If he was acting as banker and loan agent that wouldn’t have been unusual.
I knew grocers who did that in the 1980’s.
That 13 cents may have been interest.
That doesn’t reflect poorly on him at all.
There were no credit cards and bank loans were difficult for people without property to get.